LC 

111 

.1)5 



AMENDMENTS ' 



fHI CiSflT^Ili OF THE iiTi SliTES 



Non-Sectariai aid Uoiversal Mncatioii. 



VETERAN ASSOCIATION, ORDER OF UNITED AMERICANS, 



NEW YORK, FEP'.RUAKY 23d, 1876. 

REMARKS 

OK 

DANIEL ULLMANN, LL.D., 

IN RESPONSE TO THE SENTIMENT : 

Our Common Schools, the Glorv of our Republic, Undefiled by Sectarianism ; 
' OrR Hd'E AND Boast ; they shall he Maintained. 



N£iV YORK: 

RAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 25 PARK ROW. 

1876. 




Class LL . Ill 

Book ' '\j\. 




Oass. 
Book_ 



AMENDMENTS 



mmmm of m oiiied mm. 



Noii-Sectai'iai M Mnm\ EflBcalioii. 



VETERAN ASSOCIATION, ORDER OF UNITED AMERICANS, 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22d, 1876. 



'V 



REMARKS 



DANIEL ULLMANN, LL.D., 



IX RESPONSE TO THE SENTIMENT: 



Our Common Schools, the Glory of our Republic, Undefiled by Sectarianism ; 
Our Hope and Boast ; they shall be Maintained. 



/^^oVcfiN, 



NEIV YORK: 

BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 25 PARK ROW. 

1876. 



LCii 

U5 



REMARKS OF DANIEL ULLMANN. 



Gentlemen : 

We have reason to congratulate ourselves upon the 
present condition of public opinion in the United 
States. The thoughts which we expressed in other 
days, not without obloquy, are now ripening into 
national convictions. Hopes and impulses which were 
considered superficial and transient, and only the reflec- 
tion of emotion and passion, are now recognized as fixed 
purposes, based upon the elementary principles of 
political philosophy, and destined to assert themselves 
with irresistible might. Such are ever the phases and 
tendencies of historic movements. The martyrs of to- 
day are the heroes of the future. Principles which we 
promulgated long since, under many trials and vicissi- 
tudes, are evidently becoming widely diftused. Thou- 
sands, who once received them with scorn and derision, 
are now found among their most strenuous advocates. 
The upheavals of society, political and religious, daily 
demanding our attention, indicate that the mighty 



forces which control its action are stirring up its deep- 
est depths, and are preparing for a great moral revolu- 
tion. 

Some years ago, I ventured to avow my faith in an 
unsectarian system of free and universal education, 
and was therefor publicly burned in effigy ; and had 
the individuals, w'ho instigated that outrage, possessed 
tlie powders exercised by their fellows of the Spanish 
Inquisition, in the reign of Pliilip II, they would gladly 
have turned the mock into a real auto da fe. How 
striking is the contrast ! Now powerful organizations 
enthusiastically proclaim these sentiments as the basis 
of their Union ; — the State conventions of a great 
political party unhesitatingly adopt them as a portion 
of tkeir declaration of principles, and the chief magis- 
trate of the nation, in his annual message, boldly and 
comprehensively enunciates these truths. 

" Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ; 
The eternal years of God are hers. " 

" And thus the whirligig 
Of time brings in his revenges." 

Three maxims are fundamental in America : — 
First, — Tbe sovereignty of the people; Second, — An 
absolute separation of church and state ; and Third, — 



That republican institutions cannot permanently exist, 
unless the people are virtuous and intelligent. 

Now, if virtue and intelligence be the bulwark of 
American institutions, then free and universal education 
is a supreme necessity. If the maxim that there shall 
be no connection between church and state be funda- 
mental, then the schools established by the state, and 
sustained by taxes levied upon the whole people, must 
remain unsectarian. These are logical sequences, from 
which there is no escape. 

But one of the great powers of the earth utterly 
denies these axiomatic truths. The doo^matic decrees 
of the Vatican Council, and the infallible Head of the 
Roman Hierarchy, in his " Syllabus of Errors," declare 
that the whole human race are bound, at the peril of 
salvation, to believe precisely the reverse. Pius IX, in 
his encyclical letters, addressed to the whole Koman 
world, says, in effect, that these fundamental maxiros 
are " false opinions," " perverse," " detestable," and the 
result of a " delirium," and " let him " who accepts 
them " be anathema." 

Thus is the issue made. It is the same " old, old 
story." " The thing that hath been, it is that which 



shall be." Here we have, standing on this continent, 
opposed face to face, the two systems which have 
divided mankind since the beginning of history, and 
have been the cause of most of the wars which have 
desolated the earth. It is the very problem whose 
solution is the most momentous that concerns the 
human race. These two system^ cannot co-exist, with- 
out collision — conflict — war. One gives free scope to 
that love of power which is deeply seated in the cor- 
ruption of the human heart; the other to that love 
of liberty which is equally the desire of every human 
being. One system is called despotism, — the other 
freedom. So long as man is man — human nature, 
human nature — it is vain to attempt to reconcile them. 
It is a dead-lock. There is no middle ground ; both 
cannot be right ; one or the other is utterly wrong. 

It is not easy to realize the immense power of the 
Roman Hierarchy. Its huge machinery is better 
adapted to 'crush individual intelligence, and enslave 
the human mind than any other ever devised by man. 
It is a broad, comprehensive system, closely united, 
compact, steady in its counsels, untiring in its exertions 
and energetic in its action. Never losing sight of its 
great end — the government of mankind by means of 
their ignorance and superstitious fears — it adapts it- 



self with infinite flexibility and skill to the exigencies 
of each age, and the characteristics of each nation. The 
Roman Hierarchy is the most gigantic political associa- 
tion on earth. In medieval ages it claimed universal 
empire, and there is no utterance or record of modern 
Rome renouncing, retracting, or abandoning this claim. 
It holds and exercises, at this hour, despotic sway over 
two hundred millions of human beino-s. The actual 
forces which govern this vast organization are con- 
centrated in the Curia Momana, an unrecognized body, 
consisting of Jesuits — the arch-intriguers of mankind — 
who controlled the deliberations of the Vatican Coun- 
cil, and shape the action of the Hierachy, including 
the Pontiff himself. This is what Mr. Gladstone calls 
" The Ultramontane minority which pervades the 
world ; which triumphs in Belgium ; which brags in 
England ; which partly governs and partly plots in 
Fi'ance • -^ ■^- * which is everywhere coherent, 
everywhere tenacious of its purpose, everywhere knows 
its mind, follows its leaders, and bides its time." 

" This is the minority, which persecutes Italy," beau- 
tiful Italy, who, crushed for ten centuries under the iron 
heel of a soulless despot, having now achieved her na- 
tional unity, is striving to reassert her ancient pre- 
eminence in art, science and literature ; " which hates 



Germany," whose old Empire it destroyed by its un- 
ceasing efforts to realize universal dominion ; and is 
now waging a war, without truce, with Prussia and her 
great statesman ; which, in Austria, declares laws of the 
Empire annulled ; which, in Bavaria, insults the king 
in his palace, and dragoons the Diet in its chambers; 
and which, by eating out the substance of her national 
life, has reduced S23ain, once the most powerful and 
magnificent of European kingdoms, to being one of the 
most feeble. It is this same all-grasping Hierarchy, 
which, having kept the governments of Mexico, Central 
and South America in a state of chronic revolution, is 
enacting scenes of medieval bigotry on the virgin soil of 
Canada ; and, in the United States, with a compact and 
subservient minority, taught to move at tap of drum 
ecclesiastic, is advancing, as they hope, with sure and 
steady steps, to grasp and wield the sceptre of power 
on this American continent. 

Mr. Gladstone says, " that Rome has substituted for 
the proud boast of semper eadem, a policy of violence 
and change of faith." As to matters of faith, Mr. Glad- 
stone is right, — of policy, not. Rome has changed her 
faith, — her policy, never. Since the fifth century, when 
she first began to assume a political aspect, her policy 
in all lands and subsequent centuries, has been one and 



unvarying, semper eadem ; — the gratification of her insa- 
tiable lust for POWER, — financial power, political power. 
And how have the Roman Hierarchy aimed to extend 
this power ? Understanding the springs of human ac- 
tion and the forces which move society, they have al- 
ways known, that he who trains the children of a 
people, governs that people ; they have, therefore, ever 
claimed to be the sole teachers of men ; and, in every 
country and age, have striven to draw to themselves the 
exclusive instruction of youth. Necessarily, then, in the 
United States, the public schools have been their ob- 
jective point. They must either control the schools, or 
break them down. They must destroy the schools, or 
the schools will destroy them. Bishop Hughes, some 
thirty or forty years ago, began this war on the schools, 
and persistently has it ever since been waged. The 
great Archbishop, with his clear vision, thorough knowl- 
edge of American politics, and comprehensive grasp of 
mind, saw that, inside of the school-liouses, would be the 
battle-ground. 

The Roman Hierarchy are forced by an irresistible 
logic into antagonism to every scheme of education not 
under their control. In the presence of education, ab- 
solutely free and universal, they could not maintain 



10 

themselves for a single generatioD. Without ignorance 
and superstition, with which to mold mankiud into 
slaves, that vast fabric of stupendous falsehood and 
crime, with all its towers and turrets and battlements, 
gray with the hoar of twelve centuries of oppression, 
and cemented with the blood of martyrs, would totter 
and fall into endless ruin. 

And now. Gentlemen, to what practical point do 
these remarks tend ? Obviously, to this : — That this 
whole subject shall be lifted up out of the slough of 
partisan and sectarian influences, and be incorporated 
into the Constitution of the United States. Nothing 
short of this will meet the present and future exigencies 
of the case. The unwritten law of a nation is strong, 
but it becomes doubly strong, when embodied in its 
written Constitutions. I am aware that there are ob- 
jections to the interference of the National Government 
in the local management of educational affairs ; but na- 
tional education is a national duty, transcending all 
other duties, excepting that of national preservation ; 
and the interests of the whole nation are too complicated 
and universal to be left exclusively to private effort, or 
to the separate action of the several States. Some have 
neglected this great and sacred duty. No State of this 
Union stands alone ; all are connected and interdepend- 



11 

ent. The ignorance, demoralization or anarchy of one 
affects all. Unless there be, at least, an approximation 
to a harmonious unity in the entire aggregate of the 
principles and actions of a nation, it has already entered 
upon the period of its decline and fall. While, there- 
fore, it may be wise not to allow the General Govern- 
ment to enter directly into the execution of plans for 
educating the people, yet, it should have the power to 
aid or compel a State to discharge her duty, when fail- 
ing to make provision for the education of all her citi- 
zens. We are admitting to full political privileges 
millions of persons, utterly uninstructed, even in rudi: 
mentary knowledge. Intelligent citizens, having ample 
means of observation, have expressed the opinion that 
the freedmen of some States never will be educated, un- 
less the National Government shall interfere. No 
higher responsibility ever rested upon a nation than 
thaC which the American people assumed, to protect the 
loyal freedmen in the full enjoyment of all their rights 
as citizens. We emancipated them to save the nation. 
Shall a great and magnanimous j)eople not discharge 
obligations thus incurred ? 

The Constitution of the United States guarantees to 
every State a republican form of governijient. Repub- 
licanism and education are convertible, correlative terms. 



^"l 



12 

why not also guarantee to every State an imsectarian 
system of free and universal education ? 

I respectfully submit to you, for your consideration, 
these TWO amendments to the Constitution of the 
United States : — 

1. No State shall make any law respecting an estab- 
lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof; and no money raised, or property acquired by 
taxation in any State for the supjDort of public schools, 
or derived from any public fund therefor, shall ever be 
under the control of any religious sect ; nor shall any 
money so raised, or property so acquired, ever be given 
or loaned to any religious sect or denomination. 

2. "The United States shall guarantee to every 
State in this Union, a republican form of government," 

AND AN ADEQUATE SYSTEM OF FREE AND UNIVERSAL UN- 
SECTARIAN EDUCATION. 



LBJL '05 



